Tuesday, July 11, 2006

To Frisch: Writing something on the internet so creepy and offensive that you are forced to quit your job before getting canned. Ex. Deb really frisched herself when she threatened that blogger's 2 year old child with death and sexual molestation.

However, it seems that Froggy has left something out here.... To Frisch should be amended to the following:

To Frisch: Writing something on the internet so creepy and offensive that you are forced to quit your job before getting canned, while at the same time becoming a cause celeb for the Left and see a huge spike to your crappy blog.

I'm sure that Frisch will be the featured speaker at the next MoonbatapaloozaYearlyKos convention for speaking truth to power and being taken down by the right-wing fascists. Of course, if the Left wants to celebrate physical and sexual threats against a 2 year old as speaking truth to power, I s'pose that's their perogative.

So... Jeff... Any chance I could get Frisched? I mean, my day job is getting a little old and nothing's wrong with a little extra traffic. Let me know what I need to do... can't imagine doing something as creepy as Deb Frisch, but then again, I'm not some unhinged, self-described moonbat in academia hoping to move to Moonbattia. I guess that's two strike against me already, as I see it.

This report dates from a few years ago, by I found it while I was reading commentary in Environmental Science and Technology a publication of the American Chemical Society.

http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/journals/esthag/40/i13/ht...

The Science reference is Science, 289, 15Sept2000, pp 1922-25.

Some salient quotations from the article:

[...]If all U.S. cropland (186 X 106 ha) (23) had a net GWP similar to that of our conventional tillage system, the annual CO2 cost would total 0.06 Pg C equivalents. Over the most recent 6-year period for which data are available, U.S. fossil fuel emissions of 1.4 Pg C year21 grew at a rate of 0.02 Pg year21 (24). Agriculture thus plays a minor role in the GWP economy of the U.S., yet net mitigation of agricultural fluxes could offset the current annual increase in fossil fuel CO2 emissions.

Whole-system GWP analysis reveals a number of management options for mitigation. In our annual crop systems, the high net GWP of conventional tillage was largely neutralized by soil C storage during no-till management. C was also sequestered by the use of cover crops: Despite intensive cultivation, soil C storage in our low input and organic systems provided about one-third the mitigation benefit of no till. But soil C storage is only half of the story: In our no-till system, other GWP sources more than offset mitigation gains from soil C, suggesting other mitigation potentials. By substituting biological N2 fixation for synthetic fertilizer use, for example, our organic system saved an amount of CO2 equivalent to about 25% of that mitigated by no-till soil C capture...

...Many of these alternative mitigation strategies are related to tightening the nitrogen cycle of cropped ecosystems, a nontrivial challenge in light of the importance of N to crop yields. N fertilizer is not now used to sequester soil C, so reducing fertilizer use to provide greenhouse gas mitigation will require careful management of cover crops, residues, and the microbial and physical processes that regulate soil N availability (26) if high yields are to be maintained. The use of N fertilizer to sequester soil C is unlikely to result in net mitigation.

Maximum mitigation is provided by removing land from production. The strong mitigation potential of our early successional system will persist into midsuccession as carbon is also allowed to accumulate in unharvested wood

5. should I even bother pointing out......that a meat-based diet production uses more land and water than a plant-based diet?

sorry if this derails - intersting, although a bit over my head.

I think that in order to save the planet, we should all stop consuming anything... return to the caves and reduce our population by 95%.

And note how nothing is mentioned about how much more productive US farmland is compared to the undeveloped world, primarily because of the technology and knowledge applied to agriculture. If the US used the same methods and technologies as those currently in use in the undeveloped or under-developed world, the CO2 emissions would likely be higher as a ratio of cropland productivity.

''Star Hollywood actor-activists including Sean Penn and Susan Sarandon and anti-war campaigners led by bereaved mother Cindy Sheehan plan to launch a hunger strike, demanding the immediate return of U.S. troops from Iraq.

''As Americans get set to fire up barbecues in patriotic celebration of U.S. Independence Day on July 4, anti-war protesters planned to savor a last meal outside the White House, before embarking on a 'Troops Home Fast' at midnight . . .

''Penn, Sarandon, novelist Alice Walker and actor Danny Glover will join a 'rolling' fast, a relay in which 2,700 activists pledge to refuse food for at least 24 hours, and then hand over to a comrade.''

So Sean Penn is starving himself to death, but just for a day? Brilliant! If Gandhi had been that smart, he'd still have a movie career. Willie Nelson and Michael Moore are also among those participating in the ''rolling fast,'' which in Michael's case will involve going without the roll. Greater love hath no man than to lay down his lunch for his friends.

"We have been continually sheltered from the actual cost of war from the beginning," says human rights activist Meredith Dearborn. "Now it is time to bring the pain and suffering of war home. We are putting our bodies on the line for peace." And nothing brings home the pain and suffering of war like a Hollywood celebrity forgoing the soup du jour. All over the country, horrified Americans will be staring at Susan Sarandon and going, "Darling, you look fabulous! Did you lose five pounds?" Already, fans are said to be shocked at discovering Billy Crystal lunching at Spago with a whimpering, moaning Meg Ryan: "Aaaaooouuueurrrrggh, no, oh, no, oh, aaaeauugheepheuneugaaaoooo, no, no!"

''When Harry Met Sally 2?''

''No, she skipped the second endive.''[...]Personally, if celebrities have to ''put their bodies on the line for peace,'' I'd much rather see them bulk up. How about if Cameron Diaz and Gwyneth Paltrow promise to put on 20 pounds for every month Bush refuses to end his illegal war? Absent that, it's hard to see what a ''rolling fast'' does except confirm the vague suspicion one or two Americans may harbor that politically active celebrities are a lot of vain dilettantes unwilling to discombobulate their pampered lifestyles. It's unclear whether any of these celebrities will be ''starving'' long enough even to feel hungry. Bobby Sands and the IRA hunger strikers of the 1980s were never going to force Mrs. Thatcher to back down, but at least they did actually starve themselves to death.

How about if the celebs did that? Wouldn't that, after all, get right to the heart of the matter? Wouldn't that bring piercing clarity to the issue by forcing the American people to choose between tedious geopolitical responsibilities and Jennifer Aniston? Imagine if the flailing neocon warmongers had to explain to the American people why we were now down to one Dixie Chick. Bush would be cowering in the Oval Office while his spinmeisters attempted futile damage control on one horror story after another.[...]The problem for the ''activists'' is that the entire anti-war movement is undernourished. Indeed, in all their contempt for America as an effete narcissistic ninny too soft and self-absorbed to stand any pain, even al-Qaida couldn't have come up with as withering a parody of the Great Satan's decadence as a celebrity pseudo-fast. As the great Shakespearean actor Edmund Kean said on his deathbed: ''Dying is easy. Comedy is hard.'' Not for Sean Penn and Susan Sarandon.